The EQ Interview

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Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence

Author:
Adele B. Lynn

ISBN:
9780814409411

Format:
Paper or Softback

Price:
$16.00

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Overview

The only book of its kind- co-published with the Society for Human
Resource Management.
With a growing body of research showing that Emotional Intelligence is
one of the key indicators of success, smart hiring managers know that
choosing employees based on their EQ makes sense. What they don't know
is the best way to do it.

The EQ Interview gives readers the skills and understanding they
need to assess candidates' emotional intelligence and ensure that
they're the right fit for the job. This practical guide explains the
five areas of emotional intelligence, and how these competencies enhance
job performance. The book then arms interviewers with more than 250
behavior-based questions specially formulated to help determine how
applicants have used their EQ in past experiences. Readers will learn
how they can analyze and interpret answers to predict future success,
and even spot "EQ frauds? to avoid costly hiring mistakes.

Filled with insightful examples, this is the one book that shows readers
how to factor emotional intelligence into their hiring process.

About the Author

Adele B. Lynn (Belle Vernon, PA) is the founder and owner of The Adele
Lynn Leadership Group, an international consulting and training firm
whose clients include many Fortune 500 companies. Her business
focuses on helping organizations strengthen productivity and quality
through improvements in emotional intelligence and workplace trust. Her
previous books include Quick Emotional Intelligence Activities for
Busy Managers (978-0-8144-0895-7), The Emotional Intelligence
Activity Book (978-0-8144-7123-4) and The EQ Difference
(978-0-8144-0844-5).

Press Release

HEADLINE:The EQ Interview:HEADLINE

SUBHEAD:Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence:SUBHEAD

A growing body of evidence points to the fact that all technical
competencies being equal, it is an employees' emotional intelligence, or
EQ, that accounts for his or her on-the-job success. According to a 2005
study conducted by Leadership IQ, a training and research center that
teaches executive and management best practices, an overwhelming
majority of employees who fail in their responsibilities fail not
because of technical job skills, but EQ-related issues such as a
tendency to alienate coworkers, inability to accept feedback, lack of
ability to manage emotions, lack of motivation or drive, and poor
interpersonal skills. But while many companies frequently now spend
millions of dollars to assess and train existing employees in the areas
of emotional intelligence, little is being done to help hiring managers
and interviewers uncover important information about prospective job
candidates' use of emotional intelligence on the job.

THE EQ INTERVIEW: Finding Employees with High Emotional
Intelligence (AMACOM/Society for Human Resource Management 2008) by
Adele B. Lynn gives readers the skills and understanding they need to
assess candidates' emotional intelligence and ensure that they're the
right fit for the job. Co-published with the Society for Human Resource
Management, this practical guide explains the five areas of emotional
intelligence, and how these competencies enhance job performance. The
book then arms interviewers with more than 250 behavior-based questions
specially formulated to help determine how applicants have used their EQ
in past experiences.

Instead of relying purely on gut instinct and chemistry to predict a
person's effectiveness, author Adele B. Lynn explains how behavior-based
interviewing can be used to effectively examine past behavior and how
that behavior can contribute to a candidate's future success. The book
gives readers questions formulated to examine the behavioral
consequences or impact of successful results, not just the results
themselves. "For example," Lynn explains, "a line manager may have a
great production record in his unit, but may have accomplished this goal
by ignoring the needs of his peers and may in fact be blind to the goals
of the organization."

"Describe a time when you received feedback about your performance and
you disagreed with that feedback—what did you disagree with?" "Tell me
about a time when you couldn't get support for an idea that you had—what
happened, and why was this idea important to you?" These and other
questions enable readers to clearly assess every area of a job
candidates' EQ, including self awareness and self control; empathy;
mastery of purpose and vision; social expertness; and personal
influence.

Organizations that don't consider screening methods aimed at a
candidate's emotional intelligence waste their recruitment efforts. This
book gives those making hiring decisions the tools and information they
need to avoid costly hiring mistakes…and be confident that they're
hiring the best.

About the Author:

Adele B. Lynn is the founder of The Adele Lynn Leadership Group, an
international consulting and training firm that helps leaders forge
trusting relationships. She is a frequent keynote speaker who inspires
leaders to create an emotional climate conducive to high performance.
Her company also provides resources for trainers, coaches, and human
resource professionals. Her previous books include The Emotional
Intelligence Activity Book, The EQ Difference, and Quick Emotional
Intelligence Activities for Busy Managers. She lives in Belle Vernon,
Pennsylvania.

Publishers Weekly Online review

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Fundamental emotional intelligence (EQ) competencies lie beneath great
performance for nearly every job tackled by today's workforce. For a
hiring manager or interviewer, including these competencies as part of
the interview process begs consideration. We're not suggesting that
technical skills and abilities be taken for granted. Skills and
technical competence must always serve a prominent role in the
assessment process. However, a growing body of evidence points to the
fact that when technical competencies are equal, EQ competencies account
for job success in many different positions. In fact, for some
positions, EQ competencies account for a larger portion of job success
than technical competencies. Leadership IQ, a training and research
center that teaches executive and management best practices, conducted a
study of more than twenty thousand employees that tracked the success
and failure of new hires. After interviewing 5,247 managers, the study's
researchers concluded that only 11 percent of employees failed because
they lacked the technical competence to do the job. The remaining
reasons new hires failed were issues such as alienating coworkers, being
unable to accept feedback, lack of ability to manage emotions, lack of
motivation or drive, and poor interpersonal skills.1 These results
provide a good indication that including comprehensive EQ competencies
as part of the interview process gives hiring managers and interviewers
access to new and critical information to predict a candidate's
effectiveness.

As baby boomers become eligible for retirement and begin to exit the
workforce, employers grapple with how to hire and train enough workers
to fill the void. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

20 percent of the workforce will be over age fifty-five by 2010. In
2004, the number of people age forty and older in the workforce is over
56 percent.2 Companies face large numbers of new hires who will view the
organization much differently than do the employees who are leaving.
Commitment and retention will be a challenge because these new hires
will have little invested in a company. As a result, they will have
little incentive to stay for the long term if they receive a more
lucrative offer from another firm. If the hiring company doesn't meet
the new hire's expectations, that new hire will leave—causing an endless
hiring-resignation cycle and a resultant gap in the skills and abilities
needed for the company to compete. And this cycle will prove costly.
Turnover costs range from 120 to 200 percent of annual salary, and new
employee performance takes thirteen months to reach maximum efficiency.
These statistics offer another compelling reason to screen for emotional
intelligence competencies. Organizational commitment and retention are
closely linked to emotional intelligence.3 Few would argue that
commitment and retention are not useful traits. Retention links directly
to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is related to self-esteem,
emotional stability, and conscientiousness.4 The emotional intelligence
model in this book takes all of these elements into consideration.

To address and plan for future manpower needs, organizations perform
skills audits that take into account the technical skills that will be
needed once the baby boomers exit. Granted, hiring and training people
for technical skills begins to fill the technical void or brain drain,
but since various studies estimate that emotional intelligence
competencies account for anywhere from 24 to 69 percent of performance
success, companies waste their recruitment efforts if they don't
consider screening methods aimed at a candidate's emotional
intelligence.5 In addition to auditing the technical gap, companies must
begin to audit and map the skills and competencies beyond technical
excellence that drive the organization's success. What defines a
company's outstanding service orientation? What makes a company nimble
enough to act on market-driven changes? What inspires the innovation and
creativity that keep a company competitive? What forces drive the
integrity of and trust in a brand? These are not technical competencies
by nature. Although technical excellence is a competitive factor that
can't be ignored, the competencies that drive these intangible market
advantages are propelled by the very core, or fundamental, competencies
that define how a company does things.

The organization's objective becomes hiring people who can deliver the
how consistent with the company's success. The interview process gives
the hiring manager and interviewer a unique opportunity to determine how
people accomplish results, not just what they accomplish. This insight
into how people accomplish results allows the hiring manager and
interviewer to assess whether or not the person will fit within the
organization. They can assess whether the potential new hire will
contribute in a way that aligns with the organization's values and
behave in a way that is consistent with the company's competitive
advantage—or whether the candidate's behavior will collide with the
organization's goals. Poor fit is one of the three most likely causes of
employee turnover.6 Research suggests that fit, not skill or education,
is the most common reason people fail. Fit also plays a significant role
in turnover due to job dissatisfaction.

This book assists hiring managers and interviewers to assess EQ
competencies. It gives hiring managers and interviewers a description of
each of the EQ competencies, examples of the EQ competencies in the
workplace in various types of jobs, interview questions for each of the
EQ competencies, and analyses of responses to the suggested questions.
With these tools, hiring managers and interviewers can evaluate and
construct an interview plan that gives them a more complete picture of
the candidates' abilities to succeed.

Not all jobs require all the EQ competencies covered in this book.
However, because emotional intelligence is so fundamental to our ability
to interact with people, many jobs require at least some of these
competencies. The hiring manager and interviewer must decide which
competencies contribute to success in the position they are hiring for.
Then the hiring manager or interviewer should select interview questions
that represent these competencies. Some of the questions in this book
are aimed at managers or leaders; however, most are acceptable for all
job levels. We encourage the interviewer and hiring manager to record
the questions asked as well as the responses. If multiple candidates are
to be interviewed, a consistent approach and consistent questions
produce the most unbiased results.

Behavior-based interviewing forms the fundamental theoretical base for
the questions in this book. Behavior-based interviewing examines past
behavior and how that behavior contributes to a person's success.
Behavior-based interviewing in a structured format has the highest
validity of all interviewing tools, according to a study by Ryan and
Tippins from Michigan State University.7 Unfortunately, some man-

agers rely solely on the tools of gut instinct and chemistry to predict
a person's effectiveness. We recommend behavior-based interviewing,
following a defined structure, and noting and rating answers based on a
Likert scale as the most useful methods for interviewing candidates. We
believe that these methods give the interviewer important data to
quantify gut instincts and overall impressions.

To gain an understanding of emotional intelligence, the interviewer
will examine the very nature of the behaviors that led to successful
results. We believe it is possible for a candidate to have very
successful results while at the same time wreaking havoc on peers or
others within the organization. The questions in this book examine the
behavioral consequences or impact of the successful results, not just
the results. For example, a line manager may have a great production
record in his unit, but may have accomplished this goal by ignoring the
needs of peers and may in fact be blind to the goals of the
organization. Alternatively, long-term goals and results may be
sacrificed for short-term numbers.

It is also possible for certain behaviors to create a successful
outcome, yet not take into consideration the motives or intentions of
the candidate. Therefore, on many of the questions, the effective
interviewer or hiring manager will listen for the thought patterns that
preceded and those that followed a particular behavior. This gives the
interviewer insights into the intentions behind the behavior as
expressed by the candidate. The interviewer won't be in the position of
making judgments about the candidate's intentions, but instead will be
directed to listen to the facts about the candidate's intentions as
reported in reflection by the candidate herself.

Candidates will also be directed to reflect on times when their
outcomes or results didn't meet their intentions. By asking candidates
to reflect on their results, interviewers encourage candidates to reveal
behavior patterns that can dramatically affect teamwork, service
orientation, helpfulness, respectfulness, persistence, reaction to
failure, resilience, and other important EQ competencies. This helps the
interviewer and hiring manager understand how candidates use past
experiences and integrate them into their current behavior.

6. Nancy Gardner, "Should I Stay or Should I Go? What Makes Employees
Voluntarily Leave or Keep Their Jobs,? University of Washington Office
of News and Information, July 26, 2007, http://uwnews.washington

Confirmation

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We have very competitive discounts starting at 5 copies, as well as personal service, for bulk orders. Simply contact our Special Sales Department. Call 800-250-5308 or 212-903-8420 and ask for Special Sales. You can also email: SpecSlsWeb@amanet.org